Tall Story (1960) Is Fonda's First and Perkins' Last Pre-Norman
When did dreamy close-ups in movies go away, or have
they? Certainly ones like given Jane Fonda in Tall Story stopped, as in
step right in and join her for a clinch that made Hollywood a drug masses sought before
slide by 1960 that was steepening. Tall Story was sold as launch for Fonda as
New Face in All-Caps. Look at the trailer and know this was dusk on old days
and already an anachronism when vet Josh Logan put a distinctly old-style
collegiate farce in play. For Warners, it was more The Male Animal than current landscape where blackboards meant a
jungle and even Dick Clarkcouldn't harnessreckless youth, Tall Story being old folks' notion of how student bodies comport (its companion piece at twilight:High Time). They should
have put Tall Story on a time machine and sent it back to 40's theatres where
it belonged.
So why have I watched several times? Maybe
there's pity for a thing so displaced in a changing culture. Look where Jane Fonda went from here. Barbarella was ahead by less than a decade, with Euro sex dramas during interim that got her spread over Playboy pages, an
unauthorized use, but Fonda was by then vanguard of lax standards, so
they'd argue she assumed a risk. Remarkable thing is her stillworking, as in a Netflix sitcom, plus feature reunion with Robert Redford (supposedly a small part in Tall Story, though I couldn't spot him). That's going on sixty
years when you count neophyte stage work, longer than father Henry was active. Used to be news when a Gloria Swanson or Lillian Gish showed up in new
stuff, but now we've got fresh epoch of working antiques, only more
of them, lots more. Will Redford, for
instance, ever stop? And yet to me he's never been better than at recent
efforts; an only reason I watched one of the Captain Americas was RR being the
villain, his single line, Oh, Renata, I wish you'd knocked, a bigger sock than
all of CGI that surrounded it.
But back to Tall Story. It was Broadway spawned,
was saucy, and again put forth proposition, known from a Plastic Age and since,
that college was a Petri dish for young love, and hunting
ground for husbands, that notion already
discredited by dawn of the 60's, and soon to be unthinkable as a plot device.
Jane Fonda is frank here as to mate-quest, and majors in home economics toward that end. Her quarry is first-billed Anthony Perkins, and here is
where Tall Story achieves spooky resonance, the picture released but months in front of Psycho. There must have been heck of a fault
line between audiences that saw Tall Story before Psycho and those that saw it
after. Talk about adjustment issues! Tony was twitchy at best of times, but
at least not dangerous, that is before he was Norman.
Watching Tall Story since Psycho yields subtext enough to drown in. Every move
and line reading from Perkins is freighted with Norman, and that makes this woeful dated
comedy a must-watch, even where the rest, nearly as bizarre and fascinating, is
left off equation.
Much of Tall Story is known fact of
athletics being true business of colleges rather than education.
"Ethics" professor Ray Walston cites $4,000 as "a year's
salary." Should I Google and find out if that really was case for 1960 instructors?
Cold war fun is had when "CusterCollege" engages
basketball against Russian students, Tony the lanky center who rescues honor for
his team. Young players surround Perkins like hungry wolves
after fame he enjoyed. I saw Gary Lockwood, Van Williams, "Billy
Jack" Laughlin, and could but imagine laser-like ambition driving each ... but would any forfeit a future, even if unknowingly, by essaying
Norman Bates? Perkins got immortality for Psycho, but gave up chance he'd be a conventional leading man again, or at least one audiences could enjoy comfortably. Tall Story for me played as though it
would burst into a musical, which doesn't happen, but sheer odd-ness of the
thing --- and steel yourself for very extended kiss-and-nibble scenes twixt Fonda and Perkins --- make this one fun in ways not anticipated by WB marketers. They'd sell Tall
Story as "Big and Blushy," which it very much is, given what we know
now that viewers then did not. TCM runs Tall Story in HD, and there is a DVD
from Warner Archive.
Who knew Henry Fonda looked so fabulous as a woman? Looking at Jane Fonda there is NO doubt that HF was her dad and yet she looks just like him while being a beautiful woman! I wonder if Steve Railsback had a truncated career, too, for playing Charles Manson on a TV version of "Helter Skelter"? The Wolf, man.
Saw this on TV many years later... bit of a giggle at feminist Jane mouthing words that would stick in her throat later on....but she was always very good at reinventing herself...
5 Comments:
Who knew Henry Fonda looked so fabulous as a woman? Looking at Jane Fonda there is NO doubt that HF was her dad and yet she looks just like him while being a beautiful woman!
I wonder if Steve Railsback had a truncated career, too, for playing Charles Manson on a TV version of "Helter Skelter"? The Wolf, man.
What's with the airbrushing of Perkins' leg in that photo with him in the basketball uniform?
No idea. It sure wasn't me that airbrushed it.
Saw this on TV many years later... bit of a giggle at feminist Jane mouthing words that would stick in her throat later on....but she was always very good at reinventing herself...
I didn't notice how wonky Tony's leg looked in that still...probably because my attention was on Jane's legs...
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